Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network system, a device management method, a network device, a control method thereof, and a non-transitory computer-readable medium.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a device management service which performs, for example, device management, failure restoration, management of print status of a customer device (a copying machine, a printer, or the like) has been provided as a cloud service in a server on the Internet. In the device management service, a device is managed for a customer or a predetermined group, and device information regarding device usage such as device information or the actual numbers of print is sent/received between a device in a customer environment and the server on the Internet. At this time, a firewall is generally set in the customer environment, making it impossible to collect the device information directly from a server side on the Internet to the device in the customer environment. To cope with this, an arrangement is adopted in which a device management application is arranged in the customer environment, and the device management application collects the device information from the device in the customer environment and sends it to the server on the Internet. However, if the device management application arranged in the customer environment cannot communicate with the server for some reason, the server side never knows that reason.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2009-276999 discloses a technique of, if an information collection apparatus which collects network device information cannot continue collection, handing over collection processing to another device which has an information collection function in a network.
In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2009-276999, however, the information collection apparatus performs handover processing after deciding a handover destination, making it impossible to hand over information collection processing if the information collection apparatus itself cannot continue operation suddenly due to a fault, a failure, or the like.